Homebuilder Lennar is proceeding with a second 18-hole course at its Lakewood National development near Sarasota, Florida.

Vice president and senior golf course architect Brandon A. Johnson of Arnold Palmer Design Company will oversee the project, having also designed the first course, which opened in January 2017.

“Full tee sheets since opening day and a surging housing market have bolstered the need to move forward with the second course,” said Johnson.

Johnson is aiming to create a different, but complementary, experience. “While the first course is very playable with tremendous, meaningful width and strategic options, bold contours create the challenge,” he said. “The request from our client on the second course is to contrast that boldness with subtlety. While the second course will stretch beyond 7,000 yards our aim will be creating a fun, playable, beautiful golf course with strategic interest in contrasting ways to the first course.”

In addition to the more understated use of contour as a hazard, another key visual and aesthetic contrast will be a completely different, but native, landscape palette.

Johnson said that five strong finishing holes, in a beautiful natural setting alongside the Braden River, will be a highlight of the new layout. “The short drop shot par three fourteenth with the nature preserve as a backdrop will require sound judgment and control of the short irons,” he explained. “The mid-length par five seventeenth should provide risk/reward options and the short, at times reachable, par four eighteenth will be a fun hole to build and ultimately play, providing one last chance for heroics.”

The new course, the first hole of which was built during the construction phase of the first course, is expected to open in Winter 2019.